Kitty-Cat's Year
by FifthAttempt
Summary: A year in the life of Castle and Beckett, from the perspective of their five-year-old daughter, Katharine Alexandra, called Kitty-Cat by her family. I don't own Castle.


Katharine Alexandra (her family called her Kitty Cat) Beckett-Castle was excited. She was five years old and mommy and daddy had said that she could stay up until the ball dropped in Times Square – if she could stay awake. She would do whatever she had to do to stay awake. She wanted very much to see if 2025 was going to be any different from 2024. She also wanted to drink champagne, but mommy had said no and when she asked daddy, he said no, too.

So, on the morning of New Year's Eve, she slept very late. Or at least she tried to, but she was too excited to keep her eyes closed. Besides, she smelled s'morelettes. Mommy thought they were gross, but she and daddy loved s'morelettes. She went to the bathroom and washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair (sort of, she still had trouble getting the back – mommy or daddy would have to help her with that), then, putting on her robe and shoving her feet into her bumble bee slippers, she padded down to the kitchen.

She was happily surprised to see that her sister (half-sister really) Alexis was there with her niece, Martha Kate, and her step-niece and nephew. Also, Grandma Martha and Grandpa Jim were there. This was going to be a very good day.

She sat at the table and dug into her s'morelette, delighted with the buttery taste of the egg combined with the sweetness of chocolate and marshmallows.

While she ate, she wondered who else would come for the party. She started counting. There was Uncle Javi and Aunt Lanie and the twins – that was four. Then there was Uncle Ethan and Aunt Gina – another two. Uncle VIkram – Vik – and Aunt Tory were yet another two. Let's see, she was thinking hard, yes, there was Aunt Hayley and her boyfriend Anders – two more. And, finally, Aunt Victoria and her sister Aunt Elizabeth and their husbands. She added it up in her head. There would be six kids, including her, and, if you included mommy, daddy, Alexis and her husband Kevin with all the others, there would be eighteen grownups – maybe more if they'd invited other people – but at least eighteen adults and six kids.

She was suddenly worried; would she have time to take a nap so she could be fresh for the New Year? Maybe, when mommy and daddy weren't looking, she could drink some coffee. She'd heard that coffee kept people awake.

Mommy came up behind her, "Come on, Kitty cat, we have to get ready for ice-skating."

She slipped off her chair, took her now empty plate to the dishwasher and put it and her fork in, and followed mommy to her room. As they went up the stairs, she looked over her shoulder at her daddy, who had finished his s'morelette and was busy cleaning the kitchen. He looked up at her and smiled his big smile. She smiled her big smile back. She thought about daddy's smiles. He had different smiles for different people. He had one for mommy which she thought was kind of … gooey; mommy smiled at him the same way. He had a smile for Alexis that was big like her smile, but more … grownup. His smile for Grandma and Grandpa was soft. And his smile for Martha Kate was big, too, but it was still different – more like the smile Grandma and Grandpa had for her – it was a Grandpa smile. She would have gone on cataloguing smiles, but mommy was talking to her.

"So, Kitty-cat, what do you want to wear skating? The outfit you got for Christmas or the one you got for your birthday?" She loved skating and was good at it, so she got a lot of skating outfits.

"Hmm." She thought a little and then said, "The green one that looks like Anna." Anna was one of her favorite Disney Princesses. She liked how she did what she wanted even if she got in trouble for it sometimes. She didn't think too hard about the rest of the story because it made her a little sad. She wondered if growing up really meant you had to lose your parents. If that was so, then she didn't want to grow up.

"Mommy, do I have to grow up?" Mommy was helping her get her thermal underwear on straight.

"Yes, Kitten, I'm afraid you do."

"Why?"

"Because it's part of being alive. If you don't grow up, you're like a doll or a toy and not really alive."

"But what if it means I can't have you and daddy anymore?"

"Oh, Kitty-cat, you'll always have us. Even when we're not with you, you'll have us here," she pointed at her heart.

"You mean like Kevin has Jenny?"

"Exactly."

"But why does Kevin need Jenny? He has Alexis."

"That's an interesting question. Kevin loved, and still loves, Jenny. You never lose the people you love just because they go away. And it doesn't mean you can't love other people."

"Oh." She wasn't sure she understood, but she would think about it and, maybe, if she thought hard enough, she would get it. Maybe it was one of those things that they kept saying she would understand 'when she got older'.

They were through getting the outfit on, except for the skates. They'd put the skates on when they got to the rink.

They went back downstairs where daddy had finished clearing up the kitchen and was getting stuff ready to take down to the cars. Everyone else was going to meet them at the rink in Times Square. Then they'd skate, drink hot chocolate and eat roasted chestnuts, and have a lot of fun.

They'd skated a while, then had lunch. It was one of her favorite lunches – hot dogs from a cart. After eating they skated some more. Then daddy said it was time to go home. They had to rest so they would be able to stay awake to see the ball drop. Ordinarily she would argue, but she really wanted to see the ball drop, so she didn't.

It was a good thing, she thought, that the loft was so big. Having twenty-four people finding places to nap or rest was pretty hard. But they managed it. She didn't even mind that she had to share her room with Sarah Grace, Lexie, and Martha Kate.

She woke to good smells coming from downstairs. She and her temporary roommates came to a silent agreement and made their way to the kitchen. Uncle Ethan was making dinner. She liked it when Uncle Ethan made dinner, he was the best cook. Daddy said it was because he went to the CIA and learned there. This had confused her because she thought the CIA was a group of people who were spies. Daddy had explained though, that there were two CIAs. One was called the Central Intelligence Agency – they were the spies and the other one was the Culinary Institute of America where people like Uncle Ethan learned how to be chefs. She was still a little confused and thought they should change the names – maybe call one the Central Spy Agency or call the other one the Cooking School of America. Then you could have CIA for one and CSA for the other. She told her daddy this and he said he'd take it up with the people in charge.

They ate dinner. Uncle Ethan had made macaroni and cheese. It wasn't like the macaroni and cheese they had at school. It was so much better. It had five different kinds of cheese, bacon, green onions and panko bread crumbs. There were also vegetables, which she ate because she had to, and little chocolate lava cakes for dessert. She decided that, if she could learn how to make chocolate lava cake, she wanted to go to the CIA, too: the cooking one, not the spy one.

After dinner, she and the other kids helped clear the tables so mommy and daddy could put the folding ones away. The other grownups helped clean up the kitchen. By the time they had finished, it was time to go back to Times Square. They wouldn't skate this time, because it would be crowded and dark. But they would look at the decorations and talk to friends who would be there. They were lucky because they had a place to go where they could sit down, have a warm fire, and not be too crowded. Alexis said it was because they were privileged. She wasn't sure what that meant, but she thought it was a good thing.

She sat on her daddy's lap and must have dozed off for a while, because she woke up to loud voices all speaking together, "ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." Daddy lifted her up to sit on his shoulders and she grinned because she hadn't missed it. She watched the ball drop with everyone else and cheered with everyone else. It wasn't 2024 anymore, it was 2025: a whole new year.

The next day was New Year's Day. That meant getting up a little late and having chocolate chip waffles for breakfast.

After breakfast, everyone got dressed and gathered around daddy's new toy, an 84" 3D TV, to watch the Rose Parade. The rest of the family would come over later, to watch the football game. Daddy said that, next year, maybe, they would go to Pasadena and watch the parade and the game in person. And then they could go to Disneyland – the original one, not the one in Florida. She thought this was a very fine idea.

She stretched and yawned. She was still tired from last night. She figured that, after the Parade, she would take a short nap. All her nieces, nephews, and cousins would probably understand, because they would be just as tired as she was and they probably would find the football game to be just as boring as she would.

It had been a good New Year celebration and she was looking forward to what the year would bring.


End file.
